the happy conservative

I got into a knock-down, drag-out with an atheist liberal over his accusation that conservatives tend to believe in God because they do not think critically for themselves.

But he’s got the direction of causality all wrong. Believers are conservatives because of their belief, ceteris paribus. Not the other way around. It’s because a particularity of life called “unfairness.”

Whenever I tried to reason with my dad after he gave me a particularly odious chore (like scooping rotten corn - he’s a mean ol’ coot), he’d generally reply with some variation on the theme “Life ain’t fair.”

Naturally, he was right. Life isn’t fair. It’s one of those nasty rules. Here’s a short list:

1. Life isn’t fair.
2. Competition works.
3. No matter how you dress it up, Arthur Miller is still a historical footnote of little imagination and even less talent. Yet he’s still taught as American Lit. Inexplicable.

So bad things happen. Despite being more talented, better looking, and full of pith and wit, sometimes you’ll get passed over for promotion. Or fired. Even worse, you might be less talented, worse looking, and hobbled by the foot in your mouth. And there’s nothing you can do about that. And you’ll get passed over for promotion. Sorry.

So how do you deal with the fact of unfairness in life? The natural reaction is to petition for fairness. After all, that’s what we’re all after. Fairness. Equality.

If you believe in God and the afterlife, your struggle ends here. Yeah, life is unfair. Sometimes the bad guys win. But life isn’t an end it itself. It’s more like the first inning in a double-header. So you get called out on strikes. Maybe you don’t even get to bat. Don’t worry, it’ll turn out in the end. You’ve only got an infinite number of innings to play.

If you’re an atheist, you’ve only got one inning to play. That’s it, man. After that, it’s over. So you’ve got to figure out a way to keep the game going so everyone gets a hit. What’s the best way?

1. Well, if Pujols gets two hits, you just give one to the pitcher, since he botched that sac bunt and caused a double play.

1. You abolish strike-outs, because they’re unfair to people who can’t hit a curve. As Crash Davis said, “They’re fascist.”
2. And the really bad players can get a tee, provided by the umpire and paid for by the good players, so they can get a chance to hit too.

And at the end of the inning, everybody’s equal. Complete fairness. Of course, to keep track of all the exchanges, you’ll need at least three hundred umpires. That’s no problem, because the really good players are making obscene profits anyway and they won’t miss the money.

I’m not just batting a dead horse, here. I’m tossing around a serious point. If you don’t like the idea of God evening things out in the end, somebody’s got to take his place. In real life, that’s government. It becomes the job of the government to make sure no one has hurt feelings. This, not an excess of critical thinking, makes you a liberal.

Of course, this all has serious implications for happiness as well, which are coming in the second installation.